Cyber: Iran’s Weapon of Choice

Posted: January 29th, 2017

By Michael Eisenstadt

Michael Eisenstadt is Kahn Fellow, and Director of the Military and Security Studies Program at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. A specialist in Persian Gulf and Arab-Israeli security affairs, he has published widely on irregular and conventional warfare and nuclear weapons proliferation in the Middle East. Prior to joining the Institute in 1989, Eisenstadt worked as a military analyst with the U.S. government. Eisenstadt served for twenty-six years as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve before retiring in 2010. His military service included stints in Iraq; Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan; Turkey; the Office of the Secretary of Defense; the Joint Staff, and; U.S. Central Command headquarters. He is the author of "Iran's Lengthening Cyber Shadow."

Cyber is emerging as Iran’s weapon of choice for dealing with both domestic and foreign opponents.

For more than a decade, the Islamic Republic has waged a relentless cyberspying campaign against Iranian dissidents. Following its discovery of the Stuxnet cyberattacks on its nuclear program in 2010 and the imposition of new sanctions on Iran’s oil and financial sectors starting in 2011, it retaliated by conducting cyber attacks against petroleum-sector targets in Saudi Arabia and the U.S. financial sector. Meanwhile, it dramatically ramped up cyber spying efforts against foreign officials engaged in Iran policy, particularly in the United States, and cyber reconnaissance activities against critical infrastructure in the U.S. and elsewhere.

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